November 27, 2008

If I didn't make this cake with my own two hands, two feet, and left elbow, you'd have a hard time convincing me that there was sweet potato involved.

Gigi of gigi cakes and Katie of Apple and Spice have started a group specifically for cake lovers aptly named The Cake Slice. I, being a cake lover, signed on immediately. Each month a different three-layer cake is made by the members, and the chosen cake this month was Sweet Potato Cake with Chocolate Cream Frosting and Orange Filling from the book Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alicia Huntsman and Peter Wynne.

Another sweet potato cake, eh? All righty. Although I stayed true to the book's cake recipe (using sweet potatoes from my grandpa's garden), I changed up the rest. For one thing, I opted to go with my favorite frosting recipe instead of the suggested chocolate version. I'm sure none of you will be shocked to find that my favorite frosting recipe is composed of cinnamon and cream cheese, first introduced in my ode to cinnamon.

The other change was an effort to make it more Thanksgiving-friendly by using cranberry juice instead of orange juice for the filling. It didn't color the frosting as much as I had hoped, but it was a lovely little tart surprise nonetheless.

This cake was pretty darn fabulous. The sweet potato doesn't affect the flavor at all as far as I can tell, for better or for worse. It does, however, keep the crumb extremely moist, which is very important to me. The cranberry flavor is detectable, but only, I suspect, because I knew it was there. Really, the predominant flavor is cinnamon, which explains why I enjoyed the cake so much.

If you're wondering why my cake looks so dang small, it's because I only made one-third of the recipe and baked it in three mega-muffin molds. I cut each little cake in half and got two miniature three-layer cakes out of the deal. All for me.

That frosting sounds so good! Speaking of frosting I made your Pecan Praline frosting from the sweet spud cake. Now that was some yummy frosting! I poured it over the cake while it was still warm so it soaked into my bundt cake which made it even better! Thanks for sharing the recipe!~ingrid

That sounds like a great seasonal twist on that cake, which sounds delicious and definitely has your touch to it (cinnamon!). I'd happily gobble that right up--anything with sweet potato in it gets high marks in my book

Great cake Grace! The close up on the frosting really has me yearning for a big lick!I love cake too and it's really the only dessert that I crave! We love your ode to cinnamon and have some really cool Viet cinnamon waiting for ya....give us your addy!